CABUCO DE BAXIO, SAO PAULO
Under the Federal program ‘RENOVA’ run to improve the living conditions inside favelas in Brazil, urban interventions of various scales and sizes were proposed to improve the social layout of these places. The project below is an attempt to exhibit vertical living with a possibility for micro-commerce and enterprise in the area. The program rehabilitates the people who were removed to make way for the cleaning up of the Cabuco River while adding amenities for the people from the neighbourhood who get to use the various workshops and facilities spread across the height of the building. The topologies of housing proposed learning from the typologies and flexibility of favelas can offer multiple accommodation variables opening up to the appropriation of the space and eventual modification by its inhabitants. Urban agriculture is also proposed in the derelict area under the high tension lines lying close to the site which could provide further opportunity to the favelados for productive forms of micro-farming.
A model of the Cabuco de Baxio favela,with the site indicated in red.
A figure ground plan of the project with playground and recreation elements
followed by mass housing and finally in agrlculture fields under the high tension lines
Top: A contextual model of the building showing how the project sits in its context.
Bottom: A detailed model showing the possible configuration of housing units on a typical floor.
Bottom: A detailed model showing the possible configuration of housing units on a typical floor.
Exploded schematic of the project,
explaining how various programmatic elements come together and interact with each other
Development model for the scheme
An artistic impression of the activity square
Built massing
Elements of popular architecture in Brazil
that inform the quality of architecture in the project.
